Video Games, done right!

First off I would like to point out that I am writing this little post in response to a little blip I read (I will link at the end of this piece). The topic of this post was about Minecraft but it had a general tone about video game companies in general and how they should operate and the values they place on their customers.

For those of you who do not know me or are possibly new to reading my often lengthy blog posts about random stuff that interests me; my name is Andrew Spiering I am currently a Software engineer for the company Unknown Worlds working on the game Natural Selection 2 and prior to that I spent the last 5 ½ years working for Blizzard Entertainment on Starcraft 2 and Battle.net. I have spent the last 6 ½ year working in the game industry and I have come across so many amazing people and worked with some of the best of the best in their fields and during these travels I have picked up some of the wise words of soo many amazing people. This has allowed me to make some interesting observations as a someone who has played many many video games and worked on several successful triple a titles I feel like I can provide some insight into these wise words.

The specifics of this article where about “Minecraft, done right” now as those who know me may know that I am not a huge fan of Notch and I really do not enjoy Minecraft at all but I respect what Mojang is trying to do and I admire their ability to grow and create a thriving community. The article poster was arguing that Mojang should hire 20 programmers and have them work on a bunch of community mods and thus making the game “done right” because as we all know the company knows best.

The question is does the company know best? Do video game companies take their customers serious? Do they spend the time working on games that allow those who are willing the ability to customize their games making them better? Often times the answer yes… So many of the amazing games that we have today are built from the basis of a great game but furthermore are built from the basis of a great modding community and game that allows for it and I might add this is very specific to the PC gaming community as many console platforms do not allow for modding.

We take a look to the basis of so many first person shooters and we see that at that core we have games like Counter-Strike, Quake World CTF, Day of Defeat, and so many others and yet this poster would like to argue that somehow the game companies know best. I recall a time while standing in the Zodiac Club back in 2000 and among my company was a young Eric Johnson of valve and a very vibrant Doug Lombardi and among the topics of conversation was the idea of how mods allowed Valve to make money. In Eric’s own words, “There would be no valve if we had not invested in mods”, and 5 years later I would find myself starting at Blizzard Entertainment who had just shipped World of Warcraft and during my time there you would here about how Blizzard struggled to stay alive having not shipped a title since 2001 and a lot of that was Warcraft . Recent numbers indicated 6 million people worldwide playing Warcraft 3 still and much of that is playing a mod we call Dota this mod would be the catalyst for games like League of Legends, Heroes of Neworth, Dota 2 and many others and even in my current place of employment the company I work for now is based on the ideas of a mod created on Half-Life 1.

A very wise Lead Designer once said to me, “I don’t give a shit what our customers think, as if we allowed them to make the game it would be total ass” and there is some truth to that in that often times players are very selfish and they don’t think about the game but themselves and mods are really no different here… they are often created out of a dislike or like for something or people who think they can do better and there are def 100’s of upon 100’s of very crappy mods that really do take away from the game. But is that bad? Could the game company ever really catch what the game wants? The goal of the video game company is not to make games people will not play but to make games people will enjoy and furthermore make games that allow people to go beyond the resources of the game company and create content they want. The moment we start removing this ability from the customers hands and put it into the hands of the game company we will see a lot of games people don’t want to play.

I have always felt that people before I always express my views on something better than I do and I think this case is no different, Matt Groening once said,

“Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn’t mean only artistic creativity, although that’s part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people”

I think any video game that allows you to be you and express yourself through your own content or the ability to go beyond the square box it was built in is a game that we will see around for a very long time.

original article (http://www.jumblebag.com/mdr.html)